I could have been a cult writer if I’d kept writing surrealistic novels. But I wanted to break into the mainstream, so I had to prove that I could write a realistic book.

I have to write because if I don’t get something down then after a while I feel it’s going to bang the side of my head off.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

The tablet is not mainstream. Reading off the screen is not mainstream.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

I’ve been writing my entire life, and I’ll always write.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

And one more thing.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

I always have to be writing.

Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.

I’ve lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?

The moment I said I’d finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who’d got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I’d written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

I was enjoying myself writing, because I don’t know what’s going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don’t know at all what you’re going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you’re a kid and you’re reading stories.

I never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I’m only really alive when I’m writing.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear, and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses, he will endure or be forgotten.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, ‚No. No, I’m finished. Bye.‘ And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

I wanted to write.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.